Exploring Medicine Hat and Cypress Hills

A complete version of this article can be found on FestivalSeekers.com.

Known primarily for its abundant natural gas, Medicine Hat also takes pride in their locally grown food, flavorful coffee and booming art scene. To showcase this lesser-known side of the community, Medicine Hat annually hosts the Savour the Southeast festival. This festival offers a variety of different foods, flavours and treats for young and old alike. This year it takes place from September 25th to October 1st.

Just an hour outside of Medicine Hat is Cypress Hills Interprovincial Park, home to the highest point in Canada east of the Rocky Mountains. The park is full of over 400 camp sites, bike trails, hiking trails, lakes, rivers, hills and a thick wooded ecosystem found nowhere else in Canada. One of the few places in North America left untouched during the last Ice Age, some of the most dynamic and breathtaking views in Canada exist in this park. The park is open yearlong and offers a variety of winter activities, such as ice skating, sledding and cross-country skiing.

Frank Albo is known to many as "The Dan Brown of Canada". He gained this informal title through his many decades of research, interviews and investigations into the secrets of the Manitoba Legislature. Through his work, he claims that Winnipeg was meant to have a much larger role in Canada – going so far to say that it was to be the "Jerusalem of the New World".

It may sound odd, but there are a lot of strange motifs within the Manitoba Legislature that otherwise wouldn't make sense. These include being the exact dimensions of King Solomon's Temple, having medusas and demons guarding the entrances, and a "black star" of sacrifice beneath the rotunda. Stranger still is that none of these symbols are in the visually similar Saskatchewan Legislature which was constructed about the same time and for the same purpose. For some reason, the Manitoba Legislature was uniquely created in this manner.

Albo's research has not only gotten a lot of attention in Canada, but international attention too. One of these people was His Excellency Konstantin Zhigalov, Ambassador of the Republic of Kazakhstan. While visiting Winnipeg in 2014, Zhigalov attended Albo's tour. After it concluded, Zhigalov pulled Albo aside and invited him to the capital of Kazakhstan. The request was peculiar, but the moment Albo arrived, he knew exactly why he was chosen.

I was recently asked if I preferred my time in Montreal or Quebec City more, and while Montreal is a gorgeous city, decorated with thousands of green copper spires, hosts incredible festivals, has some of the most fantastic food I have ever tasted, and is spotted with beautiful parks, there was just something about Quebec City that spoke to me. Being over four hundred years old, Quebec City is one of the last remaining "walled cities" in North America, and is the only one north of Mexico.  Quebec City was the location of some of the greatest conflicts in Canadian history, including the Siege of Quebec by the British.

Belonging to three very different countries (France, England, and Canada) in its four hundred year existence, Quebec City is a mixing pot of old traditions, new ideas, cobblestone streets and modern architecture. Since there is so much to see in Quebec City, I figured I would narrow it down to a couple and let you discover the rest! Here is "8 Places to Visit in Quebec City".

(Looking for more things to do in Quebec City? Check out Lonely Planet's guide to Quebec City and Montreal!)